Table Of ContentWhy Things Matter
Inthisbook,DavidM.Blackasksquestionssuchas‘whydowecare?’and
‘what gives our values power?’ using ideas from psychoanalysis and its
adjacentsciencessuchasneuroscienceandevolutionary biologyinorderto
do so.
WhyThingsMatterexploreshowthecomparativelynewscientificdiscipline
of consciousness studies requires us to recognise that subjectivity is as
irreducible a feature of the world as matter and energy. Necessarily inter-
disciplinary, this book draws on science, philosophy and the history of
religion to argue that there can be influential values which are not based
exclusively on biological need or capricious life-style choices. It suggests
thatmanyrecentscientificcriticsofreligion,includingFreud,havefailedto
see clearly the issues at stake.
This book will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as
well as counsellors with an interest in the basis of religious feeling and in
moral and aesthetic values. The book will also be of interest to scholars of
psychoanalysis, philosophy and religion.
David M. Black is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society/Institute
of Psychoanalysis and a founder member of the Foundation for Psycho-
therapy and Counselling (WPF). He works in London. He has written and
lectured widely on science, religion and consciousness studies and is the
editor of Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Competitors or
Collaborators? (Routledge, 2006).
Why Things Matter
The place of values in science,
psychoanalysis and religion
David M. Black
Firstpublished2011
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Whythingsmatter:theplaceofvaluesinscience,psychoanalysisand
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p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-415-49370-3(hbk.) – ISBN978-0-415-49371-0(pbk.)1.
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ISBN:978-0-415-49371-0(pbk)
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Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: science and values 1
2 Consciousness: ‘a fact without parallel’ 11
3 Value-free science? Galileo and Darwin 28
4 Sympathy is different from empathy 45
5 How religions work: a comparison with psychoanalysis 63
6 The ownership of consciousness and the uniqueness of subjects 84
7 Mapping a detour: why did Freud speak of a death drive? 105
8 An outline of a ‘contemplative position’ 121
9 Selves and no-selves 139
10 The basis of responsible commitment 162
References 180
Index 190
Preface
This book has been two years in the writing, and about fifteen in the
incubating. It consists of a series of chapters, or linked essays, broadly on
the theme of values and how they can be thought about in an age when
science, often described as ‘value-free’, has such great and well-deserved
prestige. Most of these chapters began life as lectures in professional
settings, then as papers in journals or, in two cases, chapters in edited
books,butallhavebeenrevised,someveryextensively,tobecomechapters
inthisbook.Theyhavebeenwrittenintheintersticesofabusyprofessional
life, and although I hope they do not fall down on scholarship, I have
envied academic colleagues who have more time for wider reading.
Papers‘incubated’oversuchalongspanoftimeinevitablycontainmany
inconsistencies: some for good reasons (one’s thought has developed over
this long period), some stylistic (one is no longer the same person as fifteen
years ago), some for bad reasons (one has come to be high-handed with
distinctions or important points one was earlier sensitive to). I have
attemptedinthereworkingphasetodiminishtheseinconsistenciesasmuch
as possible, but some will undoubtedly remain. Similarly, I have tried to
eliminate repetitions as far as possible.
I owe many debts in connection with this book, and many of the most
important are to early figures and influences that steered me, long before I
encountered psychoanalysis, to a concern with issues of science, sympathy,
crueltyandinjustice,andafearofapossiblefutureinwhich‘gentlehearts’,
as W.H. Auden once put it, might become ‘extinct like Hegelian Bishops’.
Such afuturestillthreatens, thoughthe remarkablerecent developments in
science,inparticularthenewinterestinconsciousness,seemnowtoawaken
new possibilities, and propel the issue of values to the forefront of our
concerns. My psychoanalytic debts will be readily recognisable to my pro-
fessional colleagues: I have avoided technicalities as far as possible (except
in Chapter 7 where they became inevitable), but broadly the line that leads
from Freud through Melanie Klein to the British post-Kleinians has given
memostofmytheoreticalpsychoanalyticlandmarks.Evenwhere,inplaces,
IdisagreewithmainstreamKleiniantheory,Iamgratefultoitforitsclarity
Preface vii
andintellectualintegrity.Withregardtoneuroscience,evolutionarybiology
andphilosophy,Ihaveattemptedtoguidemyselfbyrecognisedauthorities,
helped by the fact that several psychoanalysts, in particular Mark Solms,
are also neuroscientists, and several, including Jonathan Lear, are philos-
ophers. In our understanding of early development, the major recent
advances have no longer come from within psychoanalysis; I have been
influenced especially by the work of Colwyn Trevarthen and his associates
in Edinburgh; one major root of that work is in attachment theory, which
derivesfromthepsychoanalytictraditionofJohnBowlbyandDanielStern.
Beyond my professional home territory, my reading has been extensive
but I am sure, to specialists, very shallow. Michael Polanyi I mention only
occasionally,buthisexample,asascientistwhoventuredtofollowthetrue
breadthofthephilosophicalissuesthatopenedupinfrontofhim,hasbeen
a constant inspiration to me. I would say something similar of William
James, a wonderfully daring and humane thinker, who figures nowhere in
the psychoanalytic curriculum but who undoubtedly deserves to be read
alongsideFreudasoneofthegreatpioneersinunderstandingpsychological
dynamics. I discovered the physiologist Charles Sherrington only when
most of this book was in draft form, but I felt when I did so that I was
meetingakindredspirit:thechallengetothescientificvisionof‘values’was
his concern also, many years before it was remotely fashionable. It is
notable that these impressively broad thinkers – to whom one might add
Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, and several of the originators of quan-
tumphysics – allbelongtoamuchearliergeneration.Isuspectmorerecent
scientists have often had to work too hard to achieve their professional
eminence to be able to embody the depth of seriousness and wider culture
that make a William James, a Freud, a Charles Sherrington, an Erwin
Shro¨dinger, so exhilarating and so enriching to the reader.
Onamorepersonalfront,Ihavediscussedtheseideaswithmanyfriends
and colleagues over the years, and am grateful to all of them. A psycho-
analyst lives in a world of continual serious conversations, with patients,
with students, and also with colleagues, and my thinking, ‘like the dyer’s
hand’,hasbeendeeplycolouredbymanyyearsinthisprofessionalcontext.
More particularly I am grateful to many people who made specific com-
mentsonsomeoftheearlierversionsofthesechapters,amongthemRobert
Chandler,FrancisGrier,JohnHerdman,MarthaKapos,MarthaPapadakis
andRichardRusbridger.IoweanaltogetherspecialdebttoDavidPugmire,
who read the entire manuscript in draft, and with whom I have discussed
many points in it along the way: the result would be a great deal more
philosophically naive if I had not had the benefit of his input.
Onayetmore personal front,I owe agreat debtto Juliet, mywife, who,
though often disapproving of my sympathy with religion, has been gener-
ously willing to discuss all these topics and to comment on many stages of
the drafts. She has also endured with good humour my many hours of
viii Preface
preoccupation, and ‘absence’ in all senses of the word. And finally, my
parents, the one a scientist, the other a Christian, both stand behind this
book.Inmanyways,itrepresentstheconversationtheyneverhadtogether.
I dedicate it to their memory.
Acknowledgements
Many of the chapters in this book have a history in previously published
papers. I am grateful to the referees and editors of the British Journal of
Psychotherapy, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the Journal of
Consciousness Studies, and Mental Health Religion and Culture, who
published the papers ancestral to Chapters 2 and 7, Chapter 4, Chapter 6
and Chapter 5 respectively. Jean Arundale, then editor of the British
Journal of Psychotherapy, first asked me to write a paper on Freud’s death
drive (part of an exchange with Joseph Schwartz) which became Chapter 7
here. Chapter 3 had its origins in a chapter entitled ‘The challenge of
evolution and the place of sympathy’ that appeared in Ten Lectures on
Psychotherapy and Spirituality, edited by Nathan Field, Trudy Harvey and
Belinda Sharp (Karnac, 2005) and Chapter 8 derives from a chapter in my
own edited book, Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Com-
petitors or Collaborators? (Routledge, 2006). All these papers have been
adapted, some very extensively, to convert them into ‘chapters’.
Permissions
Chapter 2 based on Black, D.M. (2004) ‘A fact without parallel’: Con-
sciousness as an emergent property. British Journal of Psychotherapy 21(1),
69–82. Reprinted with permission from Wiley-Blackwell.
Chapter 3 based on a chapter by D.M. Black (2005) in Ten Lectures on
Psychotherapy and Spirituality edited by Nathan Field, Belinda Sharp and
Trudy Harvey, reprinted with kind permission of Karnac Books.
Chapter 4, based on Black, D.M. (2004b) Sympathy reconfigured: Some
reflectionsonsympathy,empathyandthediscoveryofvalues.International
Journal of Psychoanalysis 85, 579–96. Reprinted with permission from
Wiley-Blackwell.
Chapter5basedonBlack,D.M.(2000)Thefunctioningofreligionsfrom
a modern psychoanalytic perspective. Mental Health Religion and Culture
3(1), 13–26. Reprinted with permission from Routledge. http://www.
informaworld.com.
x Acknowledgements
Chapter 6 based on Black, D. M. (2008) Reflections on the ownership of
consciousness.JournalofConsciousnessStudies15(7),5–27.Reprintedwith
permission.
Also in Chapter 6: Excerpt from ‘‘In the Waiting Room’’ from The
Complete Poems 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright (cid:216) 1979, 1983
by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, LLC.
Chapter 7 based on Black, D.M. (2001) Mapping a detour: Why did
Freud speak of a death drive? British Journal of Psychotherapy 18(2), 185–
98. Reprinted with permission from Wiley-Blackwell.
In Chapter 10: Epigraph taken from Polanyi, M. (1958/1962) Personal
Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Reprinted with permission
from Routledge (UK) and University of Chicago Press (US).
